572 You Become a Friend of One Dwarf, and You Become a Friend of All Dwarves (Bonus Chapter 1430)

(Bonus chapter for "Huo Zheng Ting Hao," 14/20)

The distance from Shadowvale to Blackflame Pass wasn't actually that great. As the crow flew, it was only thirty kilometers, but the road wound all over the place.

Inheriting the complex, ever-changing terrain around the Desolate Mountains, the road had to pass two cliffs and climb a winding mountain road with a drop of at least a hundred and thirty meters before it could truly enter the Dark Mountains.

The terrain was clearly not naturally formed. According to Kudel, more than a hundred years ago, the King of the Gnawed Bones had bombarded the area with hundreds of meteors, creating this strange landscape. The local psionic energy was also famous for its instability.

The surges of psionic energy in the Dark Mountains that accompanied the Black Calamity were especially bad, making it a real challenge to cast large-scale psionic spells in this region.

It had been like this for years, which was ample proof that this place was "not right"!

Murphy suspected it might be connected to the destruction of the Eden District during the Golden Age, but he had no further evidence.

But the Blood League vampires weren't all lying around asleep in their defenses in broad daylight, as he'd imagined. When the carriage was five kilometers from Blackflame Pass, the Blood League Knights' retainers appeared.

These fellows weren't vampires.

Though the common belief across the continent was that ordinary people serving the Blood League Knights were something like "blood thralls," Murphy knew no one in the Blood League Knights would use that term to describe their retainers.

From the information Palanno had previously revealed, the Blood League clans under Lord Payn didn't actively recruit auxiliary troops. These mortal military organizations that served the Blood League Knights had all "come of